Armita Garawand, the Iranian teenager who was in a coma after being assaulted by morality police for not wearing a veil, dies
Iranian authorities have denied reports by human rights groups alleging that morality police assaulted her for not wearing a veil
Who was Armita Garawand?
Iranian high school student Armita Garawand, who was left in a coma after an altercation with officers for violating the country’s hijab law in early October in the Tehran subway, died Saturday, local media announced.
“Armita Garawand, a student (resident of) Tehran, passed away an hour ago after intensive medical treatment and 28 days of hospitalization in the special care unit,” the Borna agency, attached to the Ministry of Youth and Sports, has reported.
The 16-year-old teenager, from a Kurdish region, had been hospitalized in Tehran’s Fajr hospital since October 1 after fainting in the capital’s subway.
Authorities said the teenager had been the victim of a “nervous breakdown” and denied any “verbal or physical altercation” between her “and passengers or subway managers.”
On Saturday, the local Tasnim news agency quoted the “official opinion of doctors” according to which the girl “suffered a fall that caused brain damage, followed by continuous convulsions, a decrease in cerebral oxygenation and cerebral edema, after a sudden drop in blood pressure.
But according to NGOs, the high school student was seriously injured during an “attack” by members of the morality police, who are in charge of enforcing Iranian women’s obligation to wear the veil in public.
This case came just over a year after the September 16, 2022 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who was arrested by the moral police for allegedly violating the strict dress rules imposed on women in Iran.
This death triggered a large protest movement in the country that left several hundred people dead, including law enforcement officers, and led to the arrest of thousands of people.